Another Week in the Life of a Los Angeles Pianist!

Monday Parkway!

I’m starting on Monday…mostly because it’s where my week started! First off two of the regulars at Parkway came in with a bunch of family and friends and brought me – yes me, a CD of ….ta da! Real Portuguese music!! Beautiful.

These wonderful people have been coming in for months and it’s always a great exchange talking to them about music and songs etc…

The husband is from Portugual and he has often asked me to play any “Portuguese” music. I have been at a loss…What is it? It’s not Brazilian even though Brazil speaks Portuguese..Okay, Now that I have had a chance to listen a bit, I know! And it’s of course unique and beautiful and the best thing is that now I can learn some real Portuguese music!! Cool!

And then- who else comes in? This awesome party of very bright people who want to hear- amongst others-“It’s a Wonderful Life!” ( “What a Wonderful World”)

The exchange with these people is just fun and the lady even asks me to come out to the table and see what else they would like to hear.

One of the party it turns out is a writer who writes for magazines in England and almost played golf recently with…… Rick Wakeman!! What? Wild! I shook his hand because he promises me he is going to play golf with Rick Wakeman in the near future and, he will shake his hand for me!!!! So now, I shook hands “once removed” with Rick Wakeman! Now that’s awesome!

Plus they did love my rather over the top version of Piano Man!! Let’s just say it brought the whole table into the piano area from the Dining room for the big finale!! : ) Amazing night!

Tuesday-at The Varnish!

Was fun. I love it when the owner of Mignon comes over late and sings. I’m not even really supposed to have anyone at The Varnish sing but he’s just awesome! Let’s see and meeting people, wonderful people is wonderful! A guy from San Fransisco asks me to play Monk! I pretty much love anyone who wants to hear Monk! And, I played Monk!

Shazam!! Kelly J ( my LA “sister”) shows up and hangs and she’s amazing so I’m of course playing amazing! And then I meet Sam!

Sam is this guy who came in with his beautiful girlfriend and said he might sing a little. Well, he did!

ME, I love harmony and I love the CSNY Song called “Helplessly Hoping”.

I played it and first Kelly started singing the harmonies and wow that was awesome but when Sam added the third part…

Harmonies are better than almost anything else on earth. And while we’re waiting to figure out world peace we can at least have 3 part harmony! : )

Sam it turns out is a writer and singer and wow! He gave me his record called The Dirty Diamonds. Amazing. I have not been able to take it out of my CD player!

And I should never mention The Left Coast Wine Bar and art Gallery without mentioning Tom and Rochelle, two of the most wonderful people in the world! They own the Left Coast and are awesome!

Great night!

Friday Vitello’s

The end of the week was as good as the rest of it. I walked in to a full room of….musicians. Most of which were going to be playing with The Patrick Williams Big Band!! Ok, you may not recognize the name but, you have heard his music!! He’s won several Grammys and 4 Emmys and has about 100 nominations combined of both.

His band is SMOKING!!

And an absolutely incredible line up including. Chuck Findlay-trumpet, whom I talked to briefly. : ) And, Tom Scott-Sax, Bob Sheppard-sax and Peter Erskine-drums. But every one of the band which had about 22 players was just outstanding!! That has to be one of the top big bands on Earth today!

It was an amazing experience to hear Pat’s music especially played by that band! I’m actually glad now that I had no idea who these guys were because they were all in the room when I started playing and on their break!

Hearing them was…spiritual!

I also met and hung out with, that’s often how it feels with the people sitting nearest to the piano, as he was, Donnie Doyle. He worked for Niel Young for 15 years and did the photography for the CD Cover for Rust Never Sleeps!

And I met a lady named Judy and her husband who plays tuba! : ) Who made my night perfect on top of everything else with their requests and banter! : ) Maybe Judy and I will do some gigs in the future! They were awesome!

Anyway….those are the high points of the week that ended with my wife and I going off for the weekend to celebrate our 28th wedding anniversary! : 0 Crazy! We had a blast!